PARIS (AFP)
Up to 500 schools across France will be totally or partly closed on Monday because of a wave of student protests that has shaken the country, the education minister said.
Lessons will be "totally or partly suspended" in some "400-500" high schools as the security conditions "have not been fulfilled", said Education Minister Edouard Geffray on Sunday, adding that 24 schools had been "burned or ransacked" since the start of the movement.
He described the closures as chiefly a security precaution ahead of large-scale protests that the leaders of the movement have called for Tuesday.
The teenagers at French high schools, known as lycees, say that their studies are being ruined by high teacher absence rates, over-long school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances.
Geffray said the number of schools affected on Monday would be comparable to the figure from Friday but vowed there would be a "partial, progressive return to lessons".
More than a third of the 468 schools in the wider Ile-de-France region surrounding the capital will be shut on Monday as a result of the protests, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing president of the region, told broadcaster Franceinfo.
The movement began at a Paris school on September 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and the security forces, which have used tear gas and truncheons against the students.
More than 5,000 people, 85% of them minors, have been arrested since the start of the movement.